


Ashes, Ashes (We All Fall Down)

by Anonymous



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, batfamily, graphic violence for like one line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A sword is an asset until it’s wielded against you. A good lesson to learn. Damian is fortunate to teach it.(An AU in which nothing is good and yet we're still satisfied.)





	Ashes, Ashes (We All Fall Down)

He’s born of frozen fire.

When the time comes to go to his father, he doesn’t. His mother made a grave mistake of making him a weapon.

Weapons are supposed to be wood and metal and powder, not flesh and blood.

Because flesh and blood will turn on you.

Damian burns down the compound on his tenth birthday.

He’d like to say he looked away, but he didn’t.

He travels. Not the world, in so large a perspective. In shadowed alleys. In airplanes that place their animals below. In subway stations, communities under the city.

He is not his mother’s shining beacon. He is not her weapon, either.

Damian goes to his father when he is thirteen. His hands are dark and scarred, grime under his fingernails. His smile is sharp.

The others do not fear him, exactly. But he can see their concerns when he looks into their blue eyes, his face reflecting.

Drake is like a playhouse, a television. He can see the calculations spin in the man’s head, antenna wiring static.

Damian reserves a special smile for him, teeth gleaming like a wolf.

Fools.

Yet they are admirable fools.

His father is quiet. His hands are strong, however. Damian learns this quickly, when they are wrapped around his neck.

And yet they are gentle.

He smiles in his father’s face. It’s almost an apology for who he is.

The man tries. He gives Damian a room. He doesn’t look away when Damian rips it to pieces. He doesn’t jump when Damian gets bored and claws at his father’s face. He catches the hand. He doesn’t break it. He doesn’t give it back until Damian apologizes.

Damian does.

He smiles while the words slip pass his lips.

(He wants to cry instead.)

(He doesn’t know how.)

He tells the truth, once. While he’s sitting at the breakfast counter, he leans over and snarls, “This isn’t a game. You won’t fix me with a smile and a pat to the head. I’m worse than you see.”

Bruce looks at him across the kitchen, brow raised.

He goes to a therapist after that.

“Are you a danger to yourself or others?”

“What.”

The glasses glint in the synthetic light, a judging glacier. (One misstep, one misstep.) “Are you a danger to yourself or others?”

He gathers his hands together. Says, “That’s a funny question.”

His father checks up on him when he’s sleeping. Damian always opens his eyes. The identical colors meet in the dark. His gaze follows his father’s shadows as he draws away.

Once he ruffles Damian’s hair, palm against his head. He can feel the pulse, life flowing from vein to vein. The warmth spreads across his body, threatens his frozen fire. It melts his eyes. When Bruce leaves the room, his eyes are wet.

Damian leaves the next day.

He rips the smile off the clown’s face, for good measure. Leaves his body in the city square.

Bye-bye.

“Men are self-serving.”

Laughs ricochet with his death.

Damian smiles in response.

He’s not a man. He’s a weapon

(He’s a boy.)

He returns to his mother.

“You can’t do this to me,” she insists. Her eyes are not afraid. He is her flesh and blood. “I made you.”

He smiles in his mother’s face. It’s almost an apology. “Yes,” he agrees. “You made me.”

They burn together.


End file.
